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Closer
As tender as it is fierce, Christopher Soden's Closer takes you through an emotional landscape, rich with vivid imagery and poignant observations. It is by turns somber and sanguine, erotic and erudite, sometimes touched by giddy loopiness. Drawing on predecessors from ancient Greece to his Beatnik forebears, Soden's confessional narratives tap directly into an intense worldview, an honest, existential look at same-gender sexuality, queer virility, maleness, and, ultimately, the human condition.
- GenresPoetry
140 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 1, 2011
11 people want to read
About the author
Christopher Soden
4 books14 followersChristopher Stephen Soden is a native Texan. He is a writer, teacher, critic, lecturer and performer. Christopher received his MFA in Writing (Poetry) from Vermont College in January of 2005. He's taught classes and guest lectured on the subjects of craft, theory, genre, literature and publication. He currently writes theatre critique for Examiner.com, PegasusNews.com, and A + C DFW. He has written poetry, plays, performance pieces, literary, film and theatre critique. His first poetry collection, Closer, was released by Rebel Satori/Queer Mojo : June 14th, 2011. His honors include: Full Fellowship for Lambda Literary Retreat: Emerging LGBT Voices August 2010. Distinguished Poets of Dallas, Poetry Society of America's Poetry in Motion Series, Founding Member, President and President Emeritus of The Dallas Poets Community. Finalist in Dobie Paisano Fellowship, 4Th Unity and LSU Outworks Drama Festivals. Finalist in Robin Becker and Refined Savage Chapbook Contests. His work has appeared in : Collective Brightness, Resilience, Assaracus, The Q Review, A Face to Meet the Faces, Ganymede Poets : One, Gay City 2, The Café Review, The Texas Observer, Sentence, Borderlands, Off the Rocks, The James White Review, The New Writer, Velvet Mafia, Poetry Super Highway, Gertrude, Touch of Eros, Gents, Bad Boys and Barbarians, Windy City Times, ArLiJo, Best Texas Writing 2.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
April 17, 2012
A Kaleidoscope of Magnificent Poetry
Christopher Soden is first and foremost a Poet. That he adds to this spectrum of a vision of the world and people far more complex that available to the normal eye and mind likely is aided by his experience as a writer of plays as well as poems, performances pieces and literary/film/theater criticism and as a teacher and a performer. His stage he presents here as his platform is his poetic voice, for calling to the reader to follow his quests through mythology, vantages of landscapes, and shared narratives into personal experiences and thoughts through the words form various characters he creates (or emulates, or critiques). Reading Christopher Soden is much like standing by a towering waterfall and hearing at once the thunder of erotic emotion as well as feeling the foggy spray the falling words leave behind - a nurturing coverlet that invites understanding, or better perhaps, fantasies fulfilled. He is a writer of courage, exploring the terrain of same sex relationships (or comings together...) as well as recalling moments in living that spurred his gift of expression and is here shared with us.
His opening poem - MEMORY MORE DREADFUL THAN GOD - is a brief but pungent thought:
memory is more dreadful than god consider them side by side
one swallows the other in a moment and you in the next
Hi keen descriptions of life processes is at once full of wit and at other times wrenching with recall:
PROPOSITIONS
I'm watching a late movie
like 'Sweet Charity' or 'No Way
to Treat a Lady' or maybe reading
Levine or Strand or Rich drinking
Jack Daniels and listening
to Artie Shaw or Duke Ellington
when it starts. Those yowling growling
serenades torn from the maws
of tomcats, rage and longing tickling
their throats. Erupting spontaneously
as they circle our house, summoning
Eleanor from her perch beside me
on the sofa. From one window
to the next, she pads and paces,
responding in turn to the eerie
supplications the boys make
mixing incantation, irritation, jeer.
She is as close as I will ever get
to offspring. Teenage daughter
findicng it difficult to resist suitors
who call for her now, after-midnight
wind carrying their pleas for respite
and romance under a sky black
and moonless; tantalizing her, nerve
to spine, like needles of ice. When she
looks up with eyes melancholy
and avid, I'm surprised how easily
jaded experience and refusal
emerges. As if I knew all along
the day would come when I must
protect her from the yearning
that makes prey of us all, dragging
us into a night thick with possibility.
Where clothing is impediment
and leverage negotiable.
Many of the poems of Christopher Soden are wondrously erotic but his articulation of the language of eros is such that it must be read in private or at least not published in a public forum - unfortunately. One 'safe one' is titled
NEIGHBOR
His hair is dark and impeccably
smooth, in the dissolving pools
of gray and yellow light
when he comes out for a cigarette.
He wears a sleeveless undershirt
even when the temperature drops,
and I can see the paddles
of his ceiling fan wheel urgently
through the open doorway
one story up and across
from my patio. Tonight he is
leaning against an iron railing,
his gaze taking him farther
than windows, leaves, and clouds.
His eyes glisten like a raccoon's
or a coyote's, though probably
not as reflective as he appears,
in this moment when I am
privileged to share
the reverie of what could be
recollection, rumination or wish.
For the first time music escapes
his living room. Favorite band
of a girl I can never forgive.
Even form where I sit he has
the cast of a Latino or Italian
and though his chin could be
stronger, I would welcome him
into my arms, my mouth.
We take a slow luxurious
draw on our smokes, inspiration
guiding careless focus.
Don't worry buddy. i will not
divulge our indiscretion.
Whether we are secret brothers,
lovers, or something in-between,
this now is mine and endless,
and will follow me on that long
last river crossing to bliss.
Soden's poems take us, accompanied, through some treacherous territory - treacherous only because we dare not go there without him - as well as some peaks of humor and some reveries of things the way we heretofore have only dreamed could be. There are moments when is liquid language is so mellifluous that his words placed as they are can be simply enough, without the thought or the meaning of the poem necessary - the first reading. But returning to these these poems often makes them best friends. One of the last poems in the collection - appropriately titled CLOSURE - is one of the finest this reader has experienced. Savor this little book - and discover it for yourself.
Grady Harp,
Christopher Soden is first and foremost a Poet. That he adds to this spectrum of a vision of the world and people far more complex that available to the normal eye and mind likely is aided by his experience as a writer of plays as well as poems, performances pieces and literary/film/theater criticism and as a teacher and a performer. His stage he presents here as his platform is his poetic voice, for calling to the reader to follow his quests through mythology, vantages of landscapes, and shared narratives into personal experiences and thoughts through the words form various characters he creates (or emulates, or critiques). Reading Christopher Soden is much like standing by a towering waterfall and hearing at once the thunder of erotic emotion as well as feeling the foggy spray the falling words leave behind - a nurturing coverlet that invites understanding, or better perhaps, fantasies fulfilled. He is a writer of courage, exploring the terrain of same sex relationships (or comings together...) as well as recalling moments in living that spurred his gift of expression and is here shared with us.
His opening poem - MEMORY MORE DREADFUL THAN GOD - is a brief but pungent thought:
memory is more dreadful than god consider them side by side
one swallows the other in a moment and you in the next
Hi keen descriptions of life processes is at once full of wit and at other times wrenching with recall:
PROPOSITIONS
I'm watching a late movie
like 'Sweet Charity' or 'No Way
to Treat a Lady' or maybe reading
Levine or Strand or Rich drinking
Jack Daniels and listening
to Artie Shaw or Duke Ellington
when it starts. Those yowling growling
serenades torn from the maws
of tomcats, rage and longing tickling
their throats. Erupting spontaneously
as they circle our house, summoning
Eleanor from her perch beside me
on the sofa. From one window
to the next, she pads and paces,
responding in turn to the eerie
supplications the boys make
mixing incantation, irritation, jeer.
She is as close as I will ever get
to offspring. Teenage daughter
findicng it difficult to resist suitors
who call for her now, after-midnight
wind carrying their pleas for respite
and romance under a sky black
and moonless; tantalizing her, nerve
to spine, like needles of ice. When she
looks up with eyes melancholy
and avid, I'm surprised how easily
jaded experience and refusal
emerges. As if I knew all along
the day would come when I must
protect her from the yearning
that makes prey of us all, dragging
us into a night thick with possibility.
Where clothing is impediment
and leverage negotiable.
Many of the poems of Christopher Soden are wondrously erotic but his articulation of the language of eros is such that it must be read in private or at least not published in a public forum - unfortunately. One 'safe one' is titled
NEIGHBOR
His hair is dark and impeccably
smooth, in the dissolving pools
of gray and yellow light
when he comes out for a cigarette.
He wears a sleeveless undershirt
even when the temperature drops,
and I can see the paddles
of his ceiling fan wheel urgently
through the open doorway
one story up and across
from my patio. Tonight he is
leaning against an iron railing,
his gaze taking him farther
than windows, leaves, and clouds.
His eyes glisten like a raccoon's
or a coyote's, though probably
not as reflective as he appears,
in this moment when I am
privileged to share
the reverie of what could be
recollection, rumination or wish.
For the first time music escapes
his living room. Favorite band
of a girl I can never forgive.
Even form where I sit he has
the cast of a Latino or Italian
and though his chin could be
stronger, I would welcome him
into my arms, my mouth.
We take a slow luxurious
draw on our smokes, inspiration
guiding careless focus.
Don't worry buddy. i will not
divulge our indiscretion.
Whether we are secret brothers,
lovers, or something in-between,
this now is mine and endless,
and will follow me on that long
last river crossing to bliss.
Soden's poems take us, accompanied, through some treacherous territory - treacherous only because we dare not go there without him - as well as some peaks of humor and some reveries of things the way we heretofore have only dreamed could be. There are moments when is liquid language is so mellifluous that his words placed as they are can be simply enough, without the thought or the meaning of the poem necessary - the first reading. But returning to these these poems often makes them best friends. One of the last poems in the collection - appropriately titled CLOSURE - is one of the finest this reader has experienced. Savor this little book - and discover it for yourself.
Grady Harp,
Displaying 1 of 1 review